"We therefore believe that the overall funding for Cohesion Policy and the CAP must be preserved in the next MFF," the seventeen countries wrote in the letter to Irish Taoiseach Micheal Martin seen by POLITICO.

The signatories include Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Romanian President Nicușor Dan coordinated the initiative and will host an informal meeting of those countries in the margins of the next European Council on Oct. 15 and 16.

The Multiannual Financial Framework, or MFF, finances everything from farmers’ subsidies to development aid, and is among the toughest negotiations in Brussels. In 2025, the European Commission proposed a budget of nearly €2 trillion for the 2028-2034 period and shifted hundreds of billions from agriculture and regional payouts, known as cohesion policy, to new priorities such as defense and competitiveness.  

The so-called Friends of Cohesion group warned that further reductions to agricultural and cohesion "would only weaken it [budget] and risk undermining public support for the European project."

Ireland’s negotiating document, or negobox, will set the scene for discussions among the EU’s 27 leaders during the summit in Brussels in October.